Head of Medical Affairs - Specialty Care (Neuroscience and Eye Care)

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas – immunology, oncology, neuroscience, and eye care – and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Tik Tok.

• Reporting into the Medical Director and leading a team of 5.

Position Overview:

This role has become open due to an internal colleague progressing to the next stage of their development plan. The role provides huge opportunities for a motivated, experienced and qualified candidate to lead a team of medical advisors in the fields of neuroscience and eye care (grouped together as Specialty Care), two key therapeutic areas for AbbVie in the Netherlands and beyond.

As well as direct line management, this role will have a heavy emphasis on working within a matrix organisation e.g., supporting a medically led neuroscience patient support programme, working with medical science liaison colleagues as well as ensuring success with cross-functional partnerships.

This role will provide a challenging mix of strategic leadership and people management and cross-functional collaboration at an exciting time for us as a company in the areas of neuroscience and eye care.  

Primary functions:

• Leads the assigned therapeutic area (TA) medical team (Specialty Care including Neuroscience and Eye Care), which includes focus on both inline and pipeline assets and indications.
• Sets and executes medical affairs strategy for the affiliate medical TA team across the range of disease/assets within this business unit. 
• Ensures translation of the TA strategy into functional planning and relevant medical deliverables.
• Ensures that the TA medical team contributes valuable, strategic input to local and global cross-functional brand plans.
• Maintains and builds a medical affairs organization aligned with affiliate requirements, fostering excellence in both performance and behaviours.
• Provides proactive and strategic input to cross-functional affiliate teams and affiliate management team (AMT) as requested.
• Drives medical excellence and inspires co-creation of innovative solutions through internal and external partnerships.
• Ensures that the medical department is fully integrated in cross-functional teams (e.g., brand teams, customer excellence workstreams, 1R&D initiatives) to support the strategy and execution of affiliate priorities, while being functionally distinct.
• Ensures adherence to applicable company standards, policies, and procedures.
• Instills, and operates within a culture of ethical and compliant behavior.

Key Responsibilities:

• Is medically responsible for the assigned TA product portfolio, provides strategic direction to her/his organization, drives execution according to global/affiliate medical priorities, identifies innovative medical strategic approaches (e.g., via the cross-functional brand plan gap process or external stakeholder interactions), and provides strategic input to cross-functional plans and leadership teams.
• Is a proactive, solution-oriented member of the Netherlands medical affairs leadership team (MALT) and contributes to the MALT plans and deliverables.
• Is a cross-functional partner of the respective business unit director(s) and market access director(s).
• Drives local medical excellence within the TA and champions implementation of enterprise medical excellence ways-of-working.
• Represents medical affairs/AbbVie externally and maintains an excellent network with TA-relevant external experts.
• Builds and executes strategic evidence generation plans addressing local/global data gaps – coaching team members in delivery of cross-functional gap analyses and participates in local evidence generation team(s) as appropriate.
• Reviews medical patient cases (e.g., early access programs), supports pharmacovigilance (PV) and other functions with strategic medical guidance related to product safety and drives efficient collaboration within the local study management organization (1R&D).
• Oversees medical review within the assigned TA, ensures appropriate use of product claims, coordinates and/or supports medical content for legal and/or regulatory affairs.
• Is a proactive cross-functional, strategic business partner, analyses local and global competitive intelligence and provides strategic perspective to cross-functional partners, supports market access/HTA-negotiations and activities as needed.

Accountability & Scope 

• Accountable for resource allocation in a medical affairs team, managing colleagues of varying levels of seniority, including leadership of complex people management situations as required.
• Leads a team of medical advisors; ensures clarity of roles and responsibility within the TA medical organization; ensures alignment with respect to medical priorities, strategies, and deliverables between medical advisors and the field medical team.
• Accountable for management of assigned budget, driving on time delivery of TA team’s deliverables and adjustment of predicted spending as appropriate. Ensures that team deliverables are in line with defined strategies and objectives.
• Acts as a country therapeutic area representative at area and global leadership meetings, represents the TA at the AMT and MLOR (medical, legal, office of ethics and compliance and regulatory) as requested.
• Is responsible for delegated TA-related activities by the affiliate medical director (MD) (e.g., signatory for materials, local risk management plan implementation, etc.) as documented in the MD delegation log; reports to the affiliate MD and works in close alignment with other members of the affiliate medical affairs leadership team (MALT).

• Medical/Pharmacy Degree (or equivalent senior scientific degree, PhD preferred) with a strong background in clinical, scientific and/or research practice. 
• Suitably qualified individuals from a strong scientific background and with relevant experience will be considered. 
• Previous medical affairs pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical industry experience is essential, and management experience of medical teams is expected. 
• Demonstrated experience of innovative medicine launches and understanding of market access dynamics and strategies.
• A broad and demonstrated understanding of drug development and commercialization processes, with sound and current knowledge of the regulatory environment, significant experience in overseeing or conducting clinical trials, a solid understanding of trial design and methodology and an understanding of the need to balance safety and efficacy concerns. 
• Track record of leading with high integrity, strong work ethics and compliant behaviour.
• Must understand and be able to plan, manage and execute budgets effectively.
• Collaborative, team-oriented approach, and will be adept at developing and supporting relationships across an organization as well as with key external stakeholders and the healthcare community at large. 
• Experience being an active contributor to cross-functional teams and/or working in matrix organizations will be essential.  
• Demonstration of strong communication and presentation skills. 
• Ability to work independently, with limited need for guidance/oversight. 
• Works broadly across functions to facilitate and support the affiliate’s medical and clinical activities as necessary.
• Must possess the ability to lead with confidence; a motivator of people s/he should have the ability to impart the vision and strategy of the company and of the department to others. 
• Experience of leading people in challenging situations e.g., leading through change, supporting team members in difficulty.
• A strong business orientation and acumen is desirable. 
• S/he will have the demonstrated ability to participate within an executive team and contribute to the development and implementation of success-oriented strategies for the company overall. 
• A result oriented entrepreneurial spirit with excellent judgment and the ability to operate independently.  He/she should possess the presence and credibility to establish and maintain productive relationships with a variety of audiences with an interest in the company including government regulators, the scientific community in both academic and private sector environment and other key stakeholders.
• Sound judgment, strong planning and organizational skills, and the ability to get things done. Demonstrated strong sense of urgency.
• Strong leadership, communication, networking, negotiation and presentation skills.
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills.
• Fluency in Dutch and English is highly desirable in order to facilitate communications between the affiliate medical department, Regional and International Medical Affairs and other AbbVie functional staff.

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives, serving our community and embracing diversity and inclusion.  It is AbbVie’s policy to employ qualified persons of the greatest ability without discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected group status.

US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html 

US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:

https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html